Database Migrations Made Easy Thanks To The WP DB Migrate Plugin

WP DB Migrate is an awesome plugin created by Brad Touesnard. This plugin makes it easy to transfer the database contents between WordPress powered sites. While there is a Pro version of this plugin available, my experience was with the free version, hosted on the WordPress plugin repository.

I needed a quick and easy way to move a database of information from a public WordPress website to my local install. Since I didn’t have access to phpMyAdmin to retrieve the database, WP Migrate DB was the next best thing. It’s as easy as installing the plugin on the site I’m migrating data from and then installing it on the site I’m moving the data to. After installation, you’ll find the settings located within the Tools menu.

Easily Perform Search and Replace Before Exporting

One of my favorite features of this plugin is the ability to replace the site URL and the file path to match the location of the site you’re migrating to. It’s the equivalent of performing a search and replace during a normal MySQL export/import routine. Being able to perform this task without having to use SQL statements or another plugin is a big time saver.

Changing the site URL is easy!

This plugin also provides the following options:

Replace GUIDs

Disable the exporting of spam comments

Disable the exporting of post revisions

Save the database file to your computer

Compress the file with gzip

Works As Expected

The plugin worked without any problems. I was able to download the MySQL file with the changes I applied and then I imported that file into my local install of WordPress. Now my local install is in synch with the public version. Although it does take some time to import the file, it’s still not enough to motivate me to figure out how to mirror the sites at least once a day. However, if I decided that this would become a routine, I would upgrade to the Pro version which contains the ability to pull remote databases and push them to my local install. That feature alone would be worth the $39 dollars which also includes updates and support for one year.

I realize there are other plugins that provide a similar feature set, but WP Migrate DB made the process so smooth, it was worthy of sharing.

Who is Jeff Chandler

Jeff Chandler is a WordPress guy in the buckeye state. Contributing writer for WPTavern. Have been writing about WordPress since 2007. Host of the WordPress Weekly Podcast.

I debated on whether I should approve your comment or not but you’re not doing anything illegal. However, if you’re going to go through with redistributing a commercial plugin for free, the least you could have done is rename everything and make it your own instead of piggy backing on the plugins name. Did you try getting in touch with Brad to figure out why the Press-Trends was part of the plugin?

I agree with Jeff about renaming. You should rename this to something different enough that it does not seem to be associated with Delicious Brains Inc. People may get confused and start coming to us for support despite your documentation. Few people will read those details. And when we refuse, they’re going to be confused and pissed that we won’t support “our” product.

I thought PressTrends might provide us with useful data (e.g. what is the most popular plugins or themes used in conjunction with our plugin), but it hasn’t really. In fact, the few times I’ve tried logging into PressTrends the site has been down or broken. This was the last straw. We will be removing the PressTrends code from WP Migrate DB Pro in version 1.3.3, hopefully going out this week.

The reason why it’s named “wp-migrate-db” is because it’s built on a fork of the original open-source plugin. I had hoped it would provide a cleaner commit history, but the first version of the pro plugin turned out to be almost a total rewrite. Nevertheless, it seems semantically correct because it is an extension of the goals of the original. And it still indicates that the “pro” version that Delicious Brains made offers something more (support).

As for Press Trends, I’m glad that you’re removing that! When I first noticed the kind of information that it was sending I was pretty upset. Especially since there wasn’t any option to disable it, and it was a fairly well hidden feature.

But, Press Trends isn’t the only issue – I just mentioned that in my comment because it’s an easy-to-explain change. The main reason why I started work on wp-migrate-db is because it’s an incredibly important plugin in my stack. It’s something that I need to pay close attention to the development of, and I needed to make installation as simple as possible. So, all that license validation code had to go – dealing with that in my provisioning scripts would have been a huge pain. And finally there’s the ethical issue of using closed-source software (which, after all, is a pretty big part of the GPL’s purpose).

Anyway, after I made the improvements I needed, I decided to release them for everyone to use – hopefully allowing others to improve on the changes I made and catch any bugs I may have introduced.

I really wish I could do this without interfering with Delicious Brains, but I don’t have any good solution for that.

Well, you have your motives but it seems stupid to not have pushed your improvements into the original free plugin, https://github.com/bradt/wp-migrate-db although there is no guarantee they would have been accepted, at least the denial of improvements would have been sturdier ground to stand on for your actions.

As for closed software, the license validation inside the plugin does not make the plugin violate the GPL. The validation ensures you’ve made a purchase and thus, can access support and receive future upgrades.

Just out of curiosity, you know Brad is trying to make a living through WP DB Migrate Pro via Delicious Brains. By keeping the plugin named the same thing, you’re hurting his business and confusing users at the same time. If it was a rewrite, then even more so it should have been renamed. By keeping it the same name, it looks like you’re capitalizing on the plugins popularity, despite not attaching your own price tag to it.

I really wish I could do this without interfering with Delicious Brains, but I don’t have any good solution for that.

Easy, rename it, remove any mention of Brad with the exception of the copyright and make it your own. Then you can do with it as you wish.

> It seems stupid to not have pushed your improvements into the original free plugin.

I avoided this because it would almost certainly be rejected, I had already edited the README in such a way that it wouldn’t make sense for a PR going to the original plugin, and making brad aware of the fork would probably have caused him to start minifying his code and removing source files (like scss) to prevent me from continuing to integrate the updates.

> As for closed software, the license validation inside the plugin does not make the plugin violate the GPL.

Of course not, I never asserted that it was. I said that I see an ethical issue with using closed source software, which happens to be one of the reasons why the GPL was made.

> By keeping the plugin named the same thing, you’re hurting his business and confusing users at the same time.

It’s not named the same thing, it’s named after the original free plugin that I forked. In asserting that my fork having that name is confusing users, you would also be saying that the original free plugin (which shares its name) is confusing users.

> If it was a rewrite, then even more so it should have been renamed.

I never said it was a rewrite, I just made improvements. Reread my comment more carefully.

> Remove any mention of Brad with the exception of the copyright and make it your own.

That would be horrible, the _least_ I can do is promote the support service that he offers through Delicious Brains and encourage people to donate to him. Afterall, he did the vast majority of the work on the plugin. I don’t want to take credit for that, I just want to share my improvements and encourage open-source development of this fantastic tool.

Well, I’ve said my piece. It’s nice that we were able to talk about it :) that doesn’t happen often. It’s not my place to speak for Brad if it came across that way. My comments were my thoughts and opinions. I’ll let you and Brad sort it out. Good luck with the fork.

I’ve been using BackupBuddy for a couple of years and love it. I use it to not only back up all of my sites but to mirror them locally as well. However the ability to “continuously synch” them is interesting. I’ll have to take a look at this. :)

I use the free version a lot! Was just recently looking at the pro version (since it’s fairly new) and trying to decide if I need those features or not. Probably. :) In any case, love this plugin. It’s one of my favorites.

if our purpose is to move the whole blog to new server, then I think Duplicator will come in handy and it is easier to use then any similar plugin. Yet, it is also simpler and contains only features we need. It is also able to do tasks what WP DB Migrate does